The ARC organizes several events throughout the year to educate the community and promote recycling in Ada, including poster and essay contests in the schools and a phone-book collection contest.

According to Bratcher, the city started its recycling program not only because of the growing public interest but also to save room in the landfill.

“If you max out your landfill prematurely, you’re looking at having to construct a new landfill, which is extremely expensive. So it’s either that or try to make better use of the space you have. When you look at it that way, I think recycling is a benefit fit as far as the city’s bottom line is concerned in the long run,” Bratcher says.

Another way the city recycles is through its annual household hazardous-waste collection event. Residents can safely dispose of pollutants such as pesticides, herbicides, oil and paint. The ARC recycles more than 100 gallons of paint each year, donating them to Habitat for Humanity or the schools’ drama departments. The Chickasaw Nation has also been involved, constructing one of the recycling trailers and establishing a ReUse Center where people can take leftovers such as paint, lumber, electronics and household items that others can pick up for free.

According to Smith, Ada has an exceptional small-city recycling initiative.

“We’ve been recognized statewide for our program,” Smith said. “That’s due to a lot of people. The city council as well as the city management has been instrumental.”

For those interested in joining the recycling efforts in Ada, ARC meetings are held the second Wednesday of each month in the west annex of the City Hall.

Trash is his business

The saying “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” literally applies in the story of Josh Hutchins, president of Tahlequah Recycling Inc. For him, trash represents an opportunity.

“After you put it in the can, it’s a big jumble of material. To the untrained eye it’s undistinguishable from garbage,” Hutchins says about recyclables.

After graduating from high school, Hutchins, a Tahlequah native, joined the Air Force and was stationed in Montana. While there, he subscribed to a curbside recycling service.

“It was pretty lame. You got a little bin the size of a carry-on suitcase every other week and you’d have to divide it yourself,” Hutchins said.

After he left the Air Force, Hutchins took a job in the recycling industry in Seattle, Wash., where he lives with his wife and daughters.

“I have a six-year-old daughter who hears me talking about recycling all the time. She said to me ‘Dad, I want to clean up the world on Saturday and Sunday.’ My wife asked me if I was going to take her. She wanted to clean up the sides of the road. So now we go and pick up trash on the weekends,” Hutchins says.

His trips home to Tahlequah, where his parents still live, inspired him to start a curbside recycling program, Tahlequah Recycling Inc. For a fee of $12 per month, Tahlequah-area residents receive a 48-gallon can in which they deposit recyclables to be picked up once a week at the curb.

Participants can recycle paper, cardboard, aluminum and plastics. Tahlequah Recycling Inc. has also started a drop-off program for glass products, which is available to the entire Tahlequah community for no cost, one Saturday each month.

One of Hutchins’ goals for the program is to improve the “culture” surrounding trash.

“There is a culture that says garbage is something you throw away and don’t want to deal with,” Hutchins says. “It’s not pleasant for the garbage truck to come by. There’s a nameless, faceless guy in a bad-smelling truck who has no interaction with customers.”

Tahlequah Recycling Inc.’s driver will be clean-shaven, in uniform and in a clean truck. Hutchins hopes this will promote interaction between the driver and customer so that the customer can become more educated.

Another of Hutchins’s goals is that Tahlequah will achieve the highest waste-diversion rate of any city in Oklahoma by the end of the year. The waste-diversion rate is the percentage of waste being reused, rather than going to a landfill.

Having recently received city approval, the curbside recycling program is in its pilot phase, servicing 50 customers. Tahlequah Recycling Inc. is currently accepting commercial and residential clients for August, when collection will begin in full force. Those interested can email tahlequahrecycling@yahoo.com with their name, phone number and address, or visit http://tahlequahrecycling.com.

Tahlequah residents who choose not to participate in the curbside collection program also have the option of dropping their recyclables off at the City of Tahlequah’s recycling center, which was established in the 1990s. The drop-off center, which accepts paper, cardboard, and all types of metal, including aluminum and tin cans, also provides employment for disabled adults who help unload vehicles and sort the recyclables.

“We have had a lot of public interest,” says Mitchell Dodd, superintendent of solid waste services for the City of Tahlequah. “We have 100 to 200 cars come in a day.”

According to mayor Ken Purdy, Tahlequah is one of the few communities in Oklahoma that recycles its sewage waste. Brush and limbs that the city collects are used to make compost, which is added to the semi-solid sewage. Once the mixture meets state and federal environmental standards, it is used as a soil amendment.

Purdy’s interest in recycling is rooted outside his mayoral office. With both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in environmental management, he has a personal passion for recycling. Purdy also serves as program director of the non-profit Solid Waste Institute of Northeast Oklahoma. The Institute serves a 14-county area, helping mostly rural communities, find solutions to their waste-management challenges. For more information visit http://www.swino.org.

“I’m pleased to see even in small communities like Tahlequah, or even in far smaller communities in northeast Oklahoma, that they are making strong efforts for recycling rather than sending all their waste to landfills,” Purdy says.

Solving the problem of illegal dumping

Larry Burrow has worked for Delaware County Solid Waste for 21 years. He started as a truck driver for the solid-waste department the same year citizens of the county voted in favor of a one-half cent sales-tax increase. The increase helped fund a new solid-waste management program, which set up dumpsters called green boxes at locations throughout the county.

Before the green boxes were established, illegal dumping of trash was a big problem in Delaware County.

“In rural areas there is no one to pick up trash,” Burrow says. “People would throw it in the hills and hollows or along the roads.”

According to Rood with ODEQ, the danger of illegal dumping is that the water supply becomes contaminated as rainwater filters down through the dump areas.

Today, there are 36 sites and 256 green boxes where residents can dispose of their household waste for free. Waste can also be deposited at one of the county’s three convenience centers.

According to Burrow, who is now the general manager of Delaware County Solid Waste, the amount of trash collected daily has grown significantly over the years, and illegal dumping has declined. When the program started, the county took in 15 tons of municipal waste each day. Twenty years later, the figure has increased more than tenfold. One way the county has responded to the growth in municipal waste is through its commitment to recycling.

“When people set a bag of trash on the curb, most of them don’t think about where it goes,” Burrow says.

In Delaware County, its next stop is the North Transfer Station, outside of Grove. There, one of Burrow’s 22 employees scans the garbage and separates anything that can be recycled. The scanner’s goal is to look at 80 percent of the waste before loading it onto a truck that travels to a landfill in Tulsa.

Residents have other options for large and unusual items. Metals of all types, including cars and appliances, can be dropped off at one of the county’s three convenience centers. Garden waste, including logs up to 15 inches in diameter, can be disposed of at the North Transfer Station where it is turned into compost and provided to residents for no charge. Clean concrete is recyclable at the same location.

Recently, the county purchased a commercial shredder, which enables residents to recycle office paper, newspaper and magazines. The shredded paper will be used for compost and animal bedding. Other items are recyclable for a small fee, including tires and construction and demolition waste. Currently, the county does not have plastic- or glass-recycling programs in place because of the lack of a local market for the products.

Overall, Burrow said the Delaware County recycling program has been very successful. The county is able to recycle 10 percent of its municipal waste. He believes that the percentage will increase to 18 percent with the new paper-recycling program.

“Twenty-five percent is the goal. Fifty percent would be ideal, but it’s hard to get to,” Burrow says.

Burrow believes that education is key to cleaning up the environment. He keeps himself educated on anything new in recycling as a board member of the Solid Waste Authority of North America. He passes his knowledge on by speaking to as many groups as he can about recycling, from school children to retirees. For him, however, recycling is more than a job.

“It’s a lifestyle,” he said. “I’m an environmental specialist. I really care about the environment. I care about the lake. It’s about educating one person at a time, one day at a time.”

For those who are not served by a local recycling program but are interested in starting one, Larry Wright, with U.S. Department of Agriculture in Cordell, Okla. offers these suggestions: 1) Determine the end use of a particular recyclable product. In order for a program to be sustainable, there must be a market for the recyclables. 2) Identify resources that will help make the program successful. The Oklahoma Recycling Association (http://www.recycleok.org) and ODEQ (http://www.deq.state.ok.us) are good places to start. 3) Engage local residents; they will be the driving force behind the program. 4) Educate the community, including the local government.